Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for managing access to a resource from a plurality of applications running on a computing device.
Description of the Related Technology
A computing device may run one or more applications which are configured to access a resource located remote from the computing device. In some cases, access to the resource may be restricted to applications which are able to provide a valid credential for the resource in question (hereinafter termed a “resource credential”). For example, the resource may enforce access control based on a combination of username and password associated with a user account for the resource, wherein the user account is associated with a user of the computing device.
Typically, an application which requires access to the resource is configured to prompt the user to input the corresponding resource credential via a user interface, as required. Similarly, an application may cache the resource credential locally, such that the application can access the resource at a later time without re-prompting the user for the respective resource credential. Where the computing device is configured with a plurality of applications which access the same resource, each application must separately and independently prompt the user for input of the associated resource credential and cache the user-provided resource credential in local memory or storage associated with each respective application. Multiple prompts to the user in this manner may result in a poor user experience for the user of the computing device.
In the present context, the resource may be a website or a service hosted by a server which is remote from the computing device. For example, the resource may be a social networking service, a media streaming service, a document management service, a productivity suite such as Office 365™ developed by Microsoft™ of Redmond, Wash., United States of America, or a web application framework such as SharePoint™ also developed by Microsoft™ The skilled person will appreciate that there are many other such resources.